


All Things Either Good or Ungood

by tebtosca



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: FBI, M/M, Minor Character Death, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:24:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tebtosca/pseuds/tebtosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>FBI profiler Jared Padalecki has been searching for the man who murdered his brother for over a decade. He gets his best lead yet in the form of the killer's only known survivor -- a mysterious amnesiac named Jensen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Things Either Good or Ungood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for spn_reversebang based on the gorgeous prompt by [fanlay](http://fanlay.livejournal.com), who is beyond talented, as well as an enthusiastic and inspiring collaborator. Art masterpost [HERE](http://fanlay.livejournal.com/14354.html)\--go leave some love!

** Quantico, Virginia—March 7, 2012 **

“I’m going to drink rum. So much rum that I might actually be a pirate by the time I’m done,” Aldis announces with a grin, pounding his fist on the tabletop for emphasis.

“You mean you’re not already a pirate? Can’t believe you’ve been fooling me all these years, Hodge,” Danneel replies, amused.

“Why, Harris, you looking to get your wench on?”

“I’ll wench you, dude.”

“God, why don’t you two just screw already and get it over with,” Misha groans, wrapping his tie around his throat to mock-hang himself. 

Jared just laughs, sipping his beer and taking a minute to enjoy the rather boisterous camaraderie between his co-workers. They‘ve just come off closing a major case, one the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the Bureau has been working on for more than a month, and it feels good to sit, relax, and think about a few days off rather than how many pregnant women are being slaughtered by a sick fuck of a librarian-turned-psychopath.

Clinical term, of course.

“What are you doing, Jared? Any hot dates I can think about while I’m lying on the beach in Miami?” Danneel inquires, with an eyebrow wiggle. When she’s on the job, she’s the most professional one out of all of them, but get her in a bar and she’s delightfully insufferable.

“Jared hasn’t had a hot date since his first year at MIT. And that was likely with an adorable aerospace engineer who liked to blush a lot,” Misha answers for him, just managing to duck before Jared can smack him on the back of his head.

“You wish you were as hot as that aerospace engineer,” Jared replies with a mock-grumble. But he can’t help smiling at his partner, who’s grinning back, all teeth. The asshole.

“Rum, guys, rum,” Aldis reminds them and a chorus of “lush!” goes up among the group.

The waitress is just bringing another round over to their table when Misha’s cell goes off. He looks down at the screen and mouths “Ferris” at the group. Danneel groans, and Jared’s right there with her. A call at night from their Unit Chief is never a good thing, especially when they all have one foot out the door and their head in vacation-land.

“Collins,” Misha answers, rolling his eyes. It only takes him about thirty seconds before his face goes pale and serious. The rest of the team go stock still and wait to hear the news that is likely going to wipe out any thoughts of rum and beaches.

“Well?” Jared prompts when Misha hangs up the phone and stares at his hand for a long moment.

“Dammit, I thought yesterday passing meant it wouldn’t happen again,” Misha mumbles, and Jared’s blood runs cold. 

Yesterday was March 6th. The day every single year that Jared fears the most. The day that he thought he finally managed to escape when the clock struck midnight and March 7th began.

“Is it…”

Misha looks up at him solemnly. “The Carver.”

Jared swears under his breath. “Fuck—“

Misha holds up his hand and stops him. “The victim’s alive, Jay. Someone survived.”

 

** New York City—March 8, 2012 **

“SAC Jeff Morgan, welcome to the New York office,” says an older man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, leading them into the strategic planning room off the branch.

“I’m SSA Samantha Ferris, and this is my team, SSAs Padalecki, Collins, Harris, and Hodge,” Ferris replies, following him in and shaking his hand firmly before nodding back at the rest of her team.

“Pleased to meet you all. These are Special Agents Cohen and Sampson, my best. We’re here to help you guys in any way we can,” Morgan says. He motions over to a tall, good-looking guy and a brunette with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.

“I wish we could have met under better circumstances, SAC Morgan. I’ve heard a lot about the good work you’re doing at this branch. Director Pileggi thinks highly of you,” Ferris says with a slight smile.

Morgan barks a laugh and winks. “Mitch and I go way back, but don’t tell him I told you that or he might get nervous that I told you the juicy parts.”

“I bet,” Ferris replies wryly. She sobers quickly though, and turns to Jared. “Padalecki, would you like to walk our friends here through the details of the case so far?”

Jared swallows hard, but nods. He opens a laptop that Cohen hooks up to a screen so that images from previous murders can be displayed for all of them to see. Not that Jared ever has to see them again, considering they are burned into both this retinas and his consciousness.

“The unsub in question is called ‘the Carver’, a nickname that he received around the time of his first known kill sixteen years ago in Austin, Texas. As expected, his weapons of choice are knives, although some cuts on the victim’s bodies indicate that he might also use a scalpel.”

He pulls up a slide of the last victim, from exactly a year ago in Philadelphia. “All of the victims are between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, usually foster kids or runaways. All of them share the same basic physical characteristics—blond hair, large eyes, full lips. Pretty boys, if you want to be crude. We believe the Carver picks them specifically for this reason, but there is never any indication of sexual assault, so we don’t believe the murders are sexually motivated. Instead, he uses his knives to create elaborate patterns in their skin. We think that he believes he is making the victims ‘more beautiful’ than they already are. The profile leads us to believe that he’s an artist of some sort, or at least fancies himself one. It’s possible he’s involved tangentially in the art world. He thinks he is sculpting their flesh into his own specific masterpiece. Unfortunately for us, he also keeps trying every year to perfect his work.”

He clicks to the next slide. “We believe he’s a ritualistic serial murderer, particularly because of the fact that all of his victims were believed to be killed on the same date—March 6th. All of the victims were taken during the days that coincide with the Pisces sign on the astrological calendar, but killed on the same date, one per year, for the past sixteen years. Because of his affinity for art, we believe the date is tied to the birthdate of Michelangelo—which happens to be March 6th.”

He clicks to the final slide, and doesn’t bother looking at it as Morgan and his team gasp at the sight. “This is what he carves into the flesh of each victim, always across their abdomen over the metaphorical womb. The word ‘renatus’, which is Latin for ‘rebirth,’ and ‘III VI,’ the Roman numeral equivalent of 3-6, or March 6th. We believe this is his signature, and that he is letting us know that in death he is giving them new life as something more perfect than they were when they started. We also believe it’s no coincidence that he picks boys with physical characteristics that make them look like something right out of a Renaissance painting.”

Jared closes his eyes briefly before concluding. “No one has ever been known to survive one of his attacks.”

“Until now,” Morgan says.

Jared nods. “Until now.”

“What do we know about the new victim?” Ferris asks, turning to Morgan.

“Not much, unfortunately. He’s older than the victim profile you’re telling me about, so that’s a big difference. A jogger found him propped up near the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park and called the cops. NYPD called us in after finding some rather interesting injuries that lined up with the Carver case.”

“What kind of injuries?” Danneel asks.

Morgan turns to look at Cohen and Sampson briefly. “It’s probably better if you see them for yourself.”

“Alright,” Ferris says with authority, standing up. “Collins, Padalecki, you go to the hospital and interview the victim. See if you can get any more info out of him.”

“Do we have a name?” Misha asks, turning to Morgan.

“Jensen. Just Jensen.”

***

“I’ll call Gen and see if she can get forensics to push through fingerprint and DNA on our vic, see what pops up,” Misha says as they head into Lenox Hill Hospital to interview the Carver’s only survivor. 

“Good idea,” Jared replies absently. Gen is the team technical analyst back at Quantico, and if anyone can sweet talk the forensics guys into hurrying their asses up, it’s her. They’d both been at MIT together, Jared graduating early, just twenty years old, before they headed off to the FBI Academy at the same time. Jared doesn’t trust easily, but she is dependable.

They flash their badges at the nurses’ station and are pointed towards the direction of the victim’s room. Jared feels a strange sense of dread and excitement as they get closer to it.

“I can’t believe we might have a chance to finally catch this asshole,” Misha muses with a shake of his head. They’ve been partners for four years, every year of which they’ve had to deal with another carved-up dead body and no leads. Misha’s a good guy, a great agent. But he has no idea what walking into this room right now means to Jared.

Padalecki is his mother’s maiden name. Little Jared Kelly doesn’t exist anymore.

A cop is guarding the room in question and they show him their badges before he opens the door to let them in. Misha enters first, but Jared stands frozen in the doorway when he sees the figure lying curled up on his side in the hospital bed. The man’s eyes flutter open and meet Jared’s for the first time. Even from a few yards away he can see how green they are, and Jared suddenly can’t move.

 

** Austin, Texas—March 6, 1996 **

“Mrs. Kelly, I’m so sorry.”

Jared sits near the top of the stairs, hidden from view so the man at the door can’t see him listening in on what he’s telling Jared’s Mama. She’s crying and Jared can see her shoulders shaking, and nothing about this is right. Mama never cries. She’s strong and funny and makes fun of Brock when he trips on his skateboard and falls on his ass.

Brock. Oh god.

“Where’s my boy, Jim?” Mama begs the man at the door, and Jared peeks around enough to see her clawing at the man’s uniform shirt. 

Brock’s been gone three days, but Mama said that he was just on a school trip. He didn’t say goodbye to Jared, which was weird, but sometimes his social worker would come and see him and stuff, and Jared doesn’t know too much about everything. Better not to snoop, his Mama always says, but sometimes Jared can’t help himself.

“I thought maybe he’d just run away. The adoption going through is a big deal and I thought maybe he just needed some time to clear his head,” Mama says, and her voice is getting hysterical. Jared doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Why would Brock run away? They‘re finally going to be a real family now, and Brock is going to be Jared’s big brother in the eyes of the law. Sure, Brock had run away a few times when he first came to live with them three years ago, but that was before they were a family. 

Jared’s face feels warm all over and tears prickle his eyes. He doesn’t cry, can’t cry. He’s fourteen, not a goddamn crybaby. Brock’s sixteen and so much cooler than him, but he treats Jared with respect. Lets him hang with him and his buddies down at the skate park. Gives him a cigarette that Jared only chokes on a little bit. 

“Mrs. Kelly, try to calm down. Where’s your husband? Should we call him?” the man at the door tells his Mama, stroking her arms up and down in what looks like it’s supposed to be a soothing gesture. Mama’s still shaking real bad though, and Jared wonders if he should run down and wrap his arms around her, too. That’s what Brock would have done, Jared thinks.

Jared’s scared though, and he stays on the stairs. He can’t help feeling ashamed for it.

“He’s at work. I can’t…please, Jim, it’s just a bad dream, isn’t it? My boy can’t be dead, I only just got him!”

Jared sucks in a sharp breath. 

_Dead? Brock’s dead? No, no, it’s not possible!_

“Stop saying that!” Jared yells, finally getting the courage to run down the stairs and make himself known. “Don’t you lie about my brother!”

“Oh, JT, oh my darling,” Mama says on a sob, rushing over to him and holding Jared close to her body. He struggles out of her grasp though, doesn’t want comfort for something that’s just not true.

“Take it back, you liar, take it back!” Jared screams at the man at the door, who keeps staring at them both with his head bowed and his hat in his hands.

“I’m sorry, son, it’s the God’s honest truth. Your brother’s gone.”

“No,” Jared gasps and runs over to the man, pounding his fists against the sonovabitch’s lying chest. “Stop making things up about my brother!”

Jared barely realizes that he can’t breathe anymore until the darkness comes and he’s falling into his Mama’s arms.

 

** New York City—March 8, 2012 **

“You okay, Jay?” asks Misha in a low voice, trying to keep Jensen from hearing him.

Jared snaps out of the daze he’s in and takes a few shallow breaths. He hasn’t had a panic attack in years, and damned if he’s going to start that again in front of the only lead they have in the most important case of his life.

“Yeah, of course,” he replies, giving Misha the best smile he can manage for emphasis.

The man lying in the bed is glancing at them warily as they approach. He sits up a little from his prone position, wincing when the movement pulls on one of his injuries. There’s a bandage on his forehead, but otherwise his face is untouched.

And what a face it is.

Jared takes a moment to appreciate the man in front of him, who is, for lack of a more fitting term, _beautiful._ His hair, half-spiked and half-flat from lying down, is a darker shade of blond than the Carver’s usual victims. His eyes, an even brighter green up close, have tiny sunbursts of lines around them, aging him probably closer to thirty rather than the teens the Carver favors. But his lips, which have a tiny tear in them on second glance, are swollen and lush, and there is a dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose and porcelain pale cheeks. This man would have been the perfect angelic victim about fifteen years earlier. But, why now?

Jared feels the back of his neck heating up a bit when he realizes he’s practically perving on the victim of a freaking serial killer. Of course, he’s a red-blooded gay man, and Jensen Mystery Man is hot as fuck, so he tries not to feel too guilty about it.

“Hi Jensen, I’m Jared and this is Misha. We’re from the FBI. Do you mind if we talk to you for a minute?” Jared says with a smile, hunching his shoulders down from his 6’5” height in an attempt to appear less intimidating. 

Jensen stares up at Jared with those eyes, his eyelashes lowering slowly as he nods his head.

Misha pulls a chair over and sits down, Jared following right after with the same action to try to put them on a more level playing field and get Jensen to relax enough to talk to them. The man’s shoulders are shaking almost imperceptibly and Jared feels a strange urge to run his hands along his bare arms to calm him.

“The other cops already talked to me. I told them everything I know,” Jensen says, his voice low and scratchy from disuse. He has no visible bruising around his neck, so Jared rules out strangulation. It’s not the Carver’s usual M.O, anyway.

“We know you did, but we’re from a special part of the Bureau called the Behavioral Analysis Unit. We’ve been searching for the man that we think did this to you for a long time,” Misha informs him, and Jensen’s eyes widen in sudden fear.

“I don’t remember anything, I swear,” Jensen insists, voice trembling. Jared reaches a hand out instinctively, placing it over where Jensen is clutching the railing on his bed. Jensen turns to look at him and Jared just smiles warmly. 

“It’s okay, Jensen, we’ll get there together. That’s why we’re here, to help you remember so we can catch the guy that did this to you,” Jared tells him, keeping his voice as level and steady as he can, although his insides are a fucking whirlwind of emotion. This is their chance, _his_ chance, to take down the bastard once and for all.

“Let’s start with what you do remember, okay? Are you from New York?” Misha asks. Jared can see Misha in his peripheral glancing at where Jared’s hand still covers Jensen’s, so Jared pulls it back slowly.

Jensen shakes his head, eyes large and suddenly glassy. He starts chewing on his cut lip, and a drop of blood appears on the pillow of the bottom one. Jensen doesn’t seem to notice the pain though, and Jared barely resists reaching over to wipe it off.

“I don’t know…I mean, the doctor said I must have been hit in the head because everything is so fuzzy and blank right now.”

Jensen looks at Jared with the most apologetic of expressions, and it hits him right in the gut. Usually—and depressingly—his unit involves cases with dead victims, so talking to a survivor hits a little too close to home. And this man right here, the only man that has seen the face of the animal that killed Jared’s brother and lived to tell about it…well, this man is the most important person in Jared’s world right now.

“Special Agent Morgan said that the doctors found an injury on you that made them realize you might be a victim of the man we’re trying to find. Do you know what they were talking about?” Misha finally asks, when Jared is silent for too long.

Jensen begins shaking again, and rubbing his hand nervously on the back of his flushed neck. Jared wants to reach over to him, but he knows Misha is watching, and he doesn’t want to risk the inevitable questions from his too-perceptive partner. 

“Yeah, I think I do,” Jensen answer finally, breath rushing out of him like a prayer.

“Can you show us?” Jared asks and Jensen locks his eyes directly on Jared’s as he slowly pulls open the front of his hospital gown and peels back the large bandage wrapped across his abdomen. 

Jared knows what he’s going to see, but it barely prepares him for the viciously angry red, but perfectly shaped “renatus III VI” carved across the flat, pale skin. He’s seen this same thing on victims before, bodies stiff and cold with rigor mortis.

He’s never seen it while life and breath still caused the skin to ripple and move, letters like a ruby-red snake slithering over Jensen’s body.

“I’m sorry, Jensen. I’m so sorry.”

Jensen’s eyes never leave his, as he rewraps the killer’s signature.

***

Danneel is just starting to brief Ferris and Morgan when Jared and Misha walk back into the New York office after returning from the hospital.

“Hospital admins found a slip of paper in the pants the vic was wearing at the crime scene with an address on it. Harris just got back from checking it out,” Ferris updates them. 

Jared nods at Danneel to continue as he leans against the table in the middle of the room.

“The place was tossed, pictures off the wall, mattress on the floor, you name it,” Danneel continues. “There was blood in the bathroom, near the sink area. Forensics is sending it to Quantico to fast-track.”

Jared’s heart starts beating when he hears the word ‘blood’, knowing that it’s likely Jensen’s. 

“Was there anything else that we can go on? Something that can help jog the vic’s memory or find a connection between him and the unsub?” Morgan asks, and Danneel shakes her head.

“Not yet, but Aldis is still there working with forensics, so he’ll let us know if something comes up.”

Ferris turns to look at Jared and Misha. “You two get anything out of the vic at the hospital?”

“Not much, doctors say he has a case of temporary amnesia. Doesn’t remember much besides his name so far,” Misha responds.

“So far,” Jared reiterates. “But he wants to remember.”

Ferris raises an eyebrow at that. “He seem willing to you?”

Jared nods a little more forcefully than he intended to. “Definitely. I think he’ll be staring at that carving for the rest of his life, and that’s incentive enough to help us.”

“Yeah, that,” Morgan says, cringing. “Pretty solid proof that we’re dealing with the same guy, isn’t it?”

Jared tries to modulate his response, even though everything in him is screaming that this is not only the “same guy”, but also their only chance to catch him. “The timeline fits, plus we’ve never released the details of the signature to the press, so a copycat is unlikely. Jensen’s age is obviously off, but his physical characteristics fit the profile.”

“Docs say they’ll probably be releasing him in a day or two. What then?” Misha asks, and Ferris shares a quick glance with Morgan.

“I think protective custody is the best option while the case is ongoing,” Ferris says.

“I agree, and we can get him into a safe house straight from the hospital. Not like we can send him back to that flipped apartment, especially since it seems to be one of those rent-by-the-week type digs,” Morgan adds. 

“Okay, it’s set then. I’m assuming you’ll have your agents assigned to watch him?” Ferris asks.

“Of course, Cohen and Sampson are on it.”

“Let me do it,” Jared interrupts suddenly, standing to his full height. Jared can feel Misha’s gaze whipping over to him, but he ignores it.

“Since when are you volunteering to babysit victims, Padalecki?” Ferris asks, a bemused expression on her face.

Jared grits his teeth, annoyed at the implication that Jensen is just another witness. “Since we have an actual chance to figure out who the Carver is.”

Ferris’ expression turns shrewd, and Jared tries to keep his face schooled.

“What makes you think you can get any more information out of him than another agent?”

“Because he trusts me, I can feel it.” And Jared does, felt it the minute that Jensen trained those bright green eyes on him and unwrapped that vile wound on his flesh.

“Since when are we going on intuition?” Danneel chimes in.

“We’re profilers, Harris. Where logic and experience meet gut instinct,” Ferris replies with a slight smile, and Jared lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“So you’ll put me on Jensen in the safe house then?” he asks one more time, just to be sure.

Ferris only pauses for a second before she nods. “Yeah, you’ll be on our vic. Collins, you work with Cortese back at Quantico to find a connection. Harris, grab Hodge and head over to the crime scene at the park and then re-interview the jogger who found him.”

They all nod in affirmation and start heading out the door again. Misha slips his hand on Jared’s forearm to pull him aside before they clear it. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Jay.”

Jared smiles, even though he kind of has no idea what he’s doing. “Trust me, Misha,” is what he says instead.

***

“Nice place,” Jensen says, looking around the living room of the safe house out in Queens. He walks slowly around the room, feet shuffling on the hardwood.

“Only the best for the United States government,” Jared replies with a rueful smile, and is pleased when Jensen returns it.

“Better than my other place, I think,” Jensen states, voice a bit hesitant.

“You remember where you were living before?” Jared asks, trying to keep from getting too excited. Jensen looks a little weak on his feet, so Jared takes him by the elbow and guides him down to the sofa in the middle of the room.

“Thanks,” Jensen mumbles, gracing him with another small smile. “Yeah, I remember a little. More like flashes really. Like watching scenes of a movie that flicker in and out.”

Jared sits next to him at the other end of the couch, keeping enough distance to not be threatening, but still close enough to establish a trust-building intimacy. “I can only imagine how scary that is for you.”

Jensen rubs the back of his neck, and Jared takes note that it’s one of Jensen’s mannerisms when he seems unsure. “It’s like I woke up from a bad dream, but I can’t remember going to sleep in the first place.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here. To help you make sense of all of it.”

“Don’t you have other cases you could be working on? Someone else to save?”

“You’re the most important person in my life right now, Jensen No-Last-Name.”

Jensen looks up at that, searching Jared’s face like he’s a puzzle that Jensen’s trying to figure out. “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or not.”

Jared wants to reach out and smooth the shadows from Jensen’s face, and it makes him suddenly wary of how true his last statement was. “I hope you don’t mind that you’re stuck with me for a little while.”

Jensen’s lips, still slightly swollen and pink from injury, quirk up into a smile. “I hope you can cook, because one of the things I do remember is that I burn water.”

Jared can’t help grinning. How _domestic._ “New York City is known for her takeout, you know. I can order like a champ.”

Jensen laughs for the very first time since Jared’s known him, and it’s suddenly one of the most beautiful sounds Jared can think of. “Only the best for the United States government, huh?”

“See, you do remember,” Jared agrees, feeling way too happy about it, and wonders exactly what he’s getting himself into.

***

Jared dreams about his brother that night. 

He’s laid out on the pull-out couch. He and Jensen ended up ordering in Chinese, Coke instead of beer because of Jensen’s pain meds and Jared’s badge, eating in a strangely comfortable silence until Jensen eventually tired and went to sleep in the only bedroom. Jared waited for the soft snores that told him Jensen was asleep before checking with the agent assigned to night duty outside the front of the house and heading to bed himself.

He dreams about the first day Brock comes to live with them. Thirteen years old, all gawky limbs and big, haunted green eyes, standing in the doorway of Jared’s room. Jared sits on the bed and stares at him, waiting for Brock to make the first move, but scared that he will. He’s never had a brother, doesn’t know what to do with one, but Brock is here now and Mama tells him that one day he’ll understand just how good that feeling can be. So Jared makes the first move instead, holds out the bag of gummi worms that he’s been hoarding, and says to this broken boy, “Hey, you want one?”

The dream Brock’s hand turns to ashes before it can take what Jared’s offering him.

Jared wakes up with a gasp, chest tight. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

“What are you sorry about?”

Jensen’s voice startles him, and Jared sits up quickly, suddenly all too aware of the fact that he’s in nothing but a t-shirt and boxers. “What? Oh…I was just dreaming.”

Jensen walks farther into the room, slowly but steadily, and glances down at the edge of the pull-out bed. Jared realizes he’s asking for permission to sit, and nods. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Jared barks out a laugh. “Isn’t it my job to ask you that?”

Jensen smiles ruefully. “You FBI guys and your protocol.”

The room is lit by dim moonlight through the flimsy curtains of the room, and Jared tries not to stare at the perfect slope of Jensen’s profile. “Did I wake you?”

Jensen shakes his head and glances over at Jared, who finds himself looking away like he just got caught. “Nah, it wasn’t you. I had a few strange dreams myself.”

“Did you remember anything?”

Jensen rubs absently at a spot on his cheek, a spot that Jared knows is darkened with a plum-colored bruise. Jared wonders if it hurts when he presses on it like that, and if Jensen even notices if it does. 

“I remember a voice. The man…I remember the man’s voice.”

Jared’s heart rate increases. “Do you remember what he said? Did he have an accent?”

Jensen wraps his arms around himself like he’s cold, and Jared just stops himself from reaching for him. “It wasn’t really an accent, or at least not one I can place. Lyrical, sing-song maybe. But then it would turn into something else, like a snake hissing at me. I don’t know.”

Even in the dark, Jared can see that Jensen’s shoulders are beginning to shake under the thin cotton of his sleep shirt. He throws caution to the wind and places his hand on Jensen’s back, between his shoulder blades, hoping that it won’t scare him.

Luckily, it seems to calm Jensen down, and his shudders become less violent. 

“Did he say anything to you? Jensen, I know this is hard, and I’m so sorry that you have to go through this, but it might be important.”

Jensen leans back into the warmth of Jared’s hand and tilts his head back, baring the length of his throat in a way that makes Jared swallow hard. 

Jared watches as Jensen closes his eyes.

“He called me Michael.”

***

“What do you think it means?” Misha asks him the next morning. Jensen’s in the shower and Jared’s on the phone to his partner to report what Jensen remembered the night before.

“Not sure. It could be anything. The name of someone from the Carver’s past. Son, maybe?”

“Think it could be connected to his Michelangelo fetish? Names are kind of close,” Misha throws out and Jared rubs a hand wearily over his face. 

“It’s definitely possible. Why don’t you have Gen run a search of the name ‘Michael’ connected to anything to do with Renaissance art or any of the prior victims. See what she comes up with.” 

“Copy that,” Misha replies. He pauses then and Jared’s about to hang up before he speaks again. “Everything okay there, Jay? This is a little unorthodox, even for you.”

Jared sighs and pours himself a cup of coffee. “I know, but I think it’s working. I mean, we got a name out of him, right? And a description of the Carver’s voice that might come in handy for recognition later on.”

Jared can practically hear Misha thinking over the phone, but he finally relents. “Yeah, you’re right. Keep up the good work and I’ll let you know what Gen gets back with. Call me right away if our boy remembers anything else.”

Jensen steps into the kitchen just then, dressed in a pair of soft sweats, skin reddened and hair glistening with moisture from the shower. He looks like every wet dream that Jared’s had since he knew what his dick was for, and he has to get off the phone with Misha right the hell now so he won’t embarrass himself. 

“Will do, partner. Talk soon.”

“Was that the other guy that came to the hospital?” Jensen asks, heading over to the counter to pour himself a cup of coffee as well. 

“Yeah, Misha. He’s my partner.”

Jensen glances over his shoulder at Jared, eyelashes lowered. “Like, partner-partner, or just for work?”

Jared’s eyebrow rises in surprise. This is new. “Nah, Misha’s married with a kid. And not exactly my type.”

“What’s your type then? Let me guess—petite, long hair? You seem like the kind of guy that wants someone to protect.”

Jared almost laughs at how almost right he is. “You’re perceptive, I’ll give you that. But I prefer tall and short hair, with a slightly lower voice.”

Jensen turns to face him then, a small smile on his face. In the light of the morning with the freshness of his shower still present, Jensen almost looks as young as the other victims before him. Jared knows he’s in vaguely dangerous territory, but he wants Jensen to trust him, so it’s worth the risk.

“I’m starting to remember a few things, Agent.”

“That’s good, Jensen. Like what?”

“I like them tall as well.”

With that, Jensen sets down his coffee cup and heads back into the bedroom.

Jared tries to convince himself he’s not totally fucked.

***

_The whimpers pull Jared out of his sleep. They are wounded, like the neighbor’s dog that one time it got hit by a car. He looks over at the bed across the room from him and sees Brock thrashing under the covers. It’s only been three weeks that he’s been with them, and Jared’s still getting used to having another person living in his space. He might only be eleven, but he’s also an only child not used to sharing much._

_Including his mama’s attention, Jared tries not to think._

_“Brock,” Jared hisses, not really sure if he should go shake the boy or leave him to his nightmare._

_Brock thrashes harder and his fists connect with the wall next to the bed with a resounding thump._

_Jared’s afraid Brock’s going to hurt himself, so he pulls himself out of the bed and tiptoes over to the other bed, sitting on it gingerly as he tries to figure out what to do. Finally, after taking a deep breath to steady himself, Jared reaches over and puts his hand on Brock’s forearm._

_And ends up with a punch in the face because of it._

_Jared doesn’t cry, not really. He kind of makes this high-pitched squeaking noise that manages to stun Brock awake. The boy stares at Jared like he’s a ghost, mouth open in a silent scream and eyes wild and terrified._

_Jared’s only eleven, and he just got socked in the face in the dark, but he can read everything that’s written all over Brock’s face._

_“Don’t let them send me back, please, I’m sorry,” Brock begs, slipping off the bed and holding onto Jared’s legs._

_“Hey, it’s okay, you didn’t mean it,” Jared replies stiffly, patting Brock tentatively on the shoulder._

_Brock weeps into the material of Jared’s pajamas bottoms, and Jared is completely stunned. He doesn’t know what to say, how to make him better. To let him know that he doesn’t need to worry about Jared telling on him because Brock can be Jared’s brother, and how wonderful is that?_

_It’s a few more seconds before Brock manages to get a grip on his emotions, pulling away from Jared and tucking himself into a ball in the middle of the bedroom floor._

_“I’m sorry, kid. That was totally lame of me.”_

_Jared drops to the floor next to him, nudging Brock until he looks over. Jared smiles a little, and Brock almost returns it. “It’s okay, it’ll be our secret. Brothers have secrets, right?_

Jensen’s screams pull Jared out of his rest, and he’s halfway through the room before Agent Cohen is bursting through the front door to check on them both. They crowd into Jensen’s bedroom and Jared rushes over to drop down to the bed. He knows it’s not the best idea to wake someone while they’re having a bad dream, but Jared goes ahead and grabs Jensen by the shoulders and shakes him gently.

“What,” Jensen gasps, his eyes tearing open and looking wildly around the room. After a moment he seems to focus on Agent Cohen in the doorway, hand ready on his holster.

“Make him go away, please,” Jensen whispers to Jared, dipping his forehead down into Jared’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, I got it,” Jared says to Cohen, who just nods and heads back out to watch the perimeter.

They breathe together for a few minutes until Jensen seems to calm down and lifts his head off of Jared’s body. He pulls back and crawls against the headboard, wrapping the sheet around himself protectively.

“I’m sorry about that,” he says, his voice still raspy from screaming.

Jared sits as still as he can, not wanting to startle Jensen any more than he already is. “Nothing to be sorry about, Jensen. You’ve gone through one of the most traumatic events imaginable. A bad dream or two is more than understandable.”

Jensen dips his head to his chest and barks out a laugh without any amusement. “Will it ever go away? This feeling?”

Jared looks at him in the dim light of the moonlight coming in from the window. “Honestly? Probably not.”

Jensen looks up at that, so Jared continues. “It’ll get better, with time and patience. But it’s something you’ll have to live with.” He inches closer on the bed to Jensen, finally sitting next to him with his back against the headboard as well. “But here’s the thing—you’re alive. Even if you have to live with it, at least you are living. There are fifteen other people out there that can’t say that.”

Jared feels where Jensen’s head tips down onto his shoulder again, and the feeling is warm and heady. “You don’t mince words, do you? No bullshit; I like that.”

“Someone has to be honest with you; might as well be me.”

Jensen turns his face into Jared’s arm, and Jared can feel his mouth against the bare skin peeking from his t-shirt. “What if I don’t remember? What if I can’t help you catch this guy?”

Jared breathes. That’s something he’s never even let himself consider. “We’re going to get him, Jensen. I won’t let him or anyone else hurt you again.”

“Why do you care?” Jensen’s eyes are searching as they suddenly stare up at him.

“You remind me of someone I couldn’t save.”

Jared doesn’t mean to say it, wishes he could bite back the words and swallow them whole. He’s suddenly afraid that Jensen will pull back from him, think he’s just a charity case or that Jared’s a bleeding heart whackjob. Which, okay, he kind of is, but it’s not just that. There’s something about Jensen that makes him feel for him, makes the little voice in Jared’s head that sound suspiciously like Brock scream.

Luckily, Jensen doesn’t seem to think any of those things and says simply, “I trust you, Jared.”

“Thank you, Jensen.”

***

The next day is more productive, with Jensen remembering flashes of what sounds like a warehouse or loft-like structure. 

“Have Gen look into warehouses in the vicinity that were rented by anyone fitting the profile. Chelsea, or maybe Long Island City in Queens. They have art installation spaces out there and it might be easier to hide something,” Jared tells Misha over the phone. 

It’s strange feeling like he’s working the case with his partner almost entirely via calls at this point, but Jared can tell that he’s getting somewhere with Jensen, and he knows if he just keeps pressing a little harder, they’re going to catch a break.

“Got it,” Misha replies, before continuing. “Also, we got forensics back on our victim, and nothing is coming up. His fingerprints aren’t in the system, and his DNA isn’t a match for any missing persons.”

“What about dental records? They took a cast in the hospital.”

“Nada,” Misha says. He pauses then, and Jared waits for what comes next. “Don’t you think that’s a little strange, Jay? That there’s no record on this guy at all?”

Jared’s shoulders tense a bit, but he shakes it out before continuing. “This guy is our victim, Misha. Remember that. Besides, no records are usually a good thing, right? At least we know he’s not out carjacking old women.”

“Sure, Jay, of course,” Misha says, his voice placating. “Besides, I have Gen checking into sealed files, see if anything pops up.”

“Good idea,” Jared replies. “And Misha, I’m sorry if I sound like a dick. It’s just Jensen…he’s messed up and I want us to help him.”

“If the case is getting to you, Jay, we can get Ferris to pull you out of the safe house. I know you want to catch this sicko, but so do we all,” Misha reminds him.

Jared’s voice tightens, and he tries not to blurt out that Misha doesn’t know shit about what this case means. He holds it in, like he’s done for the past decade. “Don’t worry, man, I have it under control. You and Gen dig up something we can work with, and let me know if the team finds another lead.”

“Jared.”

“Misha, seriously.”

“Fine, but when we catch this guy and get back to Q-town, you owe me pizza for a week from Sam’s,” Misha insists.

“Such a cheap date,” Jared replies with a grin.

“I won’t put out until the third slice, at least.”

Jared laughs and signs off the call.

***

Jared really just wants to ask Jensen if he’s down with Chinese for lunch. He knows he shouldn’t go into the bedroom without knocking, but the door is ajar and the sight inside silences him before he can bring his hand to the wood.

Jensen’s standing in front of the mirror near the end of the bed, button-down shirt that looks suspiciously like one of Jared’s opened to bare his lean chest. The bandage is off the wound on his abdomen and it sits there exposed and angry to the air. Jensen’s staring into the mirror, not touching the wound, but with eyes obviously fixed on the image of it. His face is strange, a mixture of placid and pensive that Jared can’t quite get a read on.

Jared finds that he can’t stop himself from walking into the room, and the shuffling of his feet announce his entrance without words. Jensen turns to him, quickly shutting the shirt with a practiced nonchalance that doesn’t quite fit.

“I’m sorry,” Jared starts, not sure exactly what he’s apologizing for. For spying? For not catching the Carver earlier?

Jensen waves his hand dismissively in the air and sits down on the bed. He gestures with a nod to the space next to him, and Jared takes it as a cue to approach the bed and sit down next to him. 

Jensen’s hands drop to his lap, and the faint blur of rose-colored flesh appears with the automatic opening of the shirt. Jared feels his eyes follow down, and he blinks a few times to try to make himself stop staring. 

When he looks back up, Jensen’s eyes are on him, deep and green like glass. Without saying anything, Jensen scoots himself back a bit on the bed and pulls open the shirt, sliding the material down his arms until it pools around his hips like a cloud.

Jared ducks his head, humbled, terrified, but reaches his hand out to trace the air around the edges of the wound. He doesn’t want to hurt Jensen, not any more than he’s already been hurt, but the glowing “renatus III VI” symbolizes so much of what’s been taken from Jared’s life, and he wants to run his fingers over it and reclaim it back for all who have grieved because of it.

Jared’s looked at this simple word and number combination a million times over the years; crime scene photos, artistic renderings, etched into cold dead bodies with cuts that will never bleed again. But here, on Jensen’s flesh with Jensen’s suddenly familiar scent in his nostrils, it becomes almost beautiful. It’s a symbol of life now, of literal rebirth for a man with no last name that logic says should already be a corpse.

So Jared, places his fingers upon the wound, wanting to feel the heat behind it, needing to know that someone came out the other side. 

They sit like that for long moments, Jared’s eyes transfixed on the way that Jensen’s stomach moves with each life-affirming breath he takes. It feels a little like praying.

He finally looks up, and finds Jensen looking at him with that odd expression. Jared feels stripped bare, even though he’s not the one naked from the waist up. Jensen tips his head and for one heady second they share the same oxygen, Jared’s hand still caressing the tender stripe of Jensen’s belly.

Jared’s phone ringer startles them both out of their dangerous reverie, and he pulls his hand away from Jensen like he just touched a hot stove before jumping up to answer it. He sees Jensen curling his shirt around him in his peripheral vision, and is slightly saddened that Jensen’s intense gaze is no longer on him.

“Padalecki,” Jared says into the phone, a little breathless, without checking the caller ID first.

“I think you have something that belongs to me, Agent Padalecki,” a strange, chilling voice says in his ear. “Or should I call you Agent Kelly?”

Jared’s hisses and nearly drops the phone like it’s turned into a snake.

“Who is this?” he finally says, willing his brain to turn back on. 

The mysterious caller just chuckles in response, and Jared is left with a dial tone.

“Jared, what happened? Who was that?” Jensen asks.

Jared stares at the phone in his hand, disbelief and a vicious streak of hope filling him suddenly. 

“I think that was the Carver.”

***

The phone rings again suddenly and Jared’s heart almost beats out of his chest until he realizes it’s his boss instead.

“It’s Ferris. Swing down to the branch office for a briefing in thirty.”

“I…” _Fuck._ “Yeah, of course, I’ll be there.” He ends the call as quickly as it started.

Jensen’s suddenly in his space, open palms pressing against his chest. “Jared, what did he say? Tell me what he said.”

Jared shakes his head and backs up a few inches, but Jensen follows his movement. There’s something intense in his eyes, his gaze unwavering, and Jared figures that he owes the man the truth.

“He said that I had something that belonged to him.”

Jensen’s fingers dig into Jared’s chest for just a second before he pulls back. 

“He was tall.”

“What?” Jared’s confused by the sudden change of subject.

Jensen’s hands are back on him then, but now they are sliding back up the side of his neck and Jared can’t help the slight shiver that it causes.

“He was tall, so tall. Like you,” Jensen says, hand sliding into the hair on Jared’s neck and then back down again. “And yet nothing like you.”

“Jensen,” Jared says, swallowing hard, Adam’s apple against Jensen’s fingertips. “I have to go into the office. My boss just called, but this is a good thing, okay? It means he’s worried.”

Nails dig into Jared’s skin as Jensen tenses. “Don’t leave me, Jared.”

“Just for an hour or two, I promise. Agent Sampson is right outside the door, you will be absolutely safe, I swear to you.”

Jensen pulls away then, turning his back to Jared, and Jared misses his face already.

“Right, of course. You have to tell them about the call.”

Jared hesitates, remembering how the Carver called him Agent Kelly. How the hell could he know something like that? 

“There’s a…complication.”

Jensen glances at him over his shoulder, curiously. “Complication?”

“The Carver mentioned something in the call, something about me personally. It’s a long story, but it’s just something I need to figure out myself before I bring the team in on it.”

“I have nothing but time, Jared. A long story sounds good to me.”

“I want to…” _Ah, fuck it._ “Let me do what I need to do, and then when I get back, we’ll talk, alright?”

The look in Jensen’s eyes is just on the flipside of wary, but he nods his head anyway.

“You concentrate on trying to remember more physical details. Hair color, eyes, scars, anything,” Jared says, pulling on his suit jacket. He watches Jensen hug himself, his mind realizing with a spark of something disturbing that Jensen is indeed wearing one of his shirts.

“Be careful, Jared. He’s watching now.”

With that, Jensen turns and heads into the bathroom, leaving Jared standing there silent.

***

“How’s it going with our vic? Get anything new out of him today?” Ferris asks, striding into the room with Morgan hot on her heels.

Jared stands up, rolling a bottle of water in his hands around his palms. “Jensen’s good. He’s starting to remember physical appearance. He said the Carver is tall, comparable to my height. He also remembers the voice well enough to do a vocal line-up, if necessary.”

Ferris nods her head, obviously pleased with the progress. “That’s good, keep it up. Cortese got what we think is a good hit off the warehouse tip. There’s a warehouse out in Long Island City that was rented two months ago by a trust run by someone named ‘Michael Tresei.’ Sound familiar?”

Jared swears under his breath. Michael Tre Sei. Michael three six. 

“Yeah, I know,” Ferris deadpans. “Collins is out in Queens talking to the leasing agent. It was probably rented in cash, but maybe we’ll get lucky and the unsub will mess up.”

“Did they get anything out of the jogger that found Jensen?” Jared asks, turning to Morgan, who just smiles ruefully.

“Not really. She just said that he was lying near the Bethesda fountain as, and I quote, ‘pretty as the angel itself’.”

Yeah, Jared knows _that_ feeling. 

“Does he remember anything about himself? Cortese is coming back with zip on forensics, and a little information might be nice,” Ferris says.

Jared shrugs. “Not yet, but he’s been concentrating on remembering the unsub, so it’s not surprising. I detect a slight accent when he’s tired, but nothing I can pinpoint besides a basic southern region.”

“Okay, good work. If there’s nothing else to report, I’ll let you get back to him.”

He should tell them about the call. He knows he should. Every fiber in his being is telling him to follow protocol and catch the bad guy and _dammit._

“Nothing else to report. I’ll let you know as soon as I have more.”

Jared nods at Ferris and Morgan, and makes his way out of the room, schooling his face into placidity so he won’t give away how freaking stupid he’s being. But it’s done now, and the Carver might call again, so he needs to figure out a way to trace the call if he does. He watches to make sure he’s undetected, before sliding into the room containing the technical support for the New York City branch.

Jared’s Mama always told him that he has two things going for him: natural charm, and, when that doesn’t work, dimples. He sees a pretty, dark-haired tech analyst sitting at her computer and figures it’s time to turn on both.

“Hey, Sandy, isn’t it?” He makes a point of introducing himself to the local team when he arrives in a city, since he never knows when he’s going to need a favor on a case.

The analyst turns her chair around and looks at him with a bright smile. “Oh, hi! Agent Padalecki, how are you doing?”

He drops down into the seat next to her, so he’s not towering. Her shoulders seem to relax with the movement, and he can see where her eyes ever so slightly track his body. “I’m good, working the Carver case. I’m sure you’ve heard all about it.”

Her eyes widen slightly and she nods with a slight frown. “Yeah, it’s terrible. That poor guy. I can’t even imagine what he’s going through right now.”

“Yeah, I know. But this is our chance to catch this unsub, so we have to do everything in our power to make that happen.”

Sandy nods more earnestly this time, and Jared lets himself feel like a douchebag for a second. 

“Of course, Agent Padalecki. If there’s anything I can do to help, you just let me know.”

Recognizing his in, Jared scoots imperceptibly closer to her. He reads her tells perfectly, and her body leans forward into the space he’s occupying. 

“You can help me, actually. I need a wiretap for a cellphone, with a tracing system and a portable recording device I can use onsite.” He lowers his voice just enough to create the barest sense of intimacy. “Can you get that for me, Sandy?”

“I can help you trace from here…”

“It’s very time-sensitive matter, Sandy. I think there’s a good chance you could be the one to help me catch this killer.”

Jared watches her bite her lip and sees the thrill of importance flash in her eyes.

“Yeah, okay. I can get you that.”

_Bingo._

***

“Agent,” Jared nods at Agent Sampson as he hops out of the rental car in front of the safe house. “Everything quiet?”

“As a church,” Agent Sampson replies with a smile, moving aside so he can enter the house.

“Not quite,” Jared mumbles under his breath. He gets inside and looks around quickly for Jensen before heading back into the living room to setup the tracking and recording equipment on his cellphone. His hands shake imperceptibly, nervous energy running through him as he thinks about the phone ringing again. About hearing the voice of the man that destroyed his family and so many others like it.

As soon as he has everything setup, he stills to try and hear Jensen somewhere in the house. Agent Sampson said nothing happened while he was gone, but Jared’s on edge enough to need to see proof that Jensen is alright.

“Jensen?” he calls out, walking slowly into the bedroom. There’s no response and no Jensen, so he heads over to the bathroom and presses his ear to the wood of the door. The only sound is the soft lapping of water.

“Jensen, are you in there? Are you okay?” He pauses for a second when there is still no response, so he says more forcefully, “Jensen, if you don’t answer, I’m going to have to come in.”

He waits two more beats before pressing open the fortunately unlocked door and walking slowly in, using his peripheral vision only in case Jensen is an embarrassing position. The sight he catches, however, is just Jensen’s arm, hanging limply outside the bathtub. 

“Jensen,” Jared says, choking, remembering flashes of several crudely healed scars that ran the length of his brother’s forearm, concealed at first by long sleeve t-shirts, revealed by circumstance. Brock never talked about it, but he didn’t have to.

Jensen’s arm moves then, hand beckoning to the sound of Jared’s voice, and Jared pushes his fist to his mouth to keep himself from reacting with vocal and visceral relief. 

“Come here, Jared.”

Jensen’s voice is quiet and calm, and Jared follows it against his better judgment. He steps closer to the bath, averting his eyes from what is surely pink, heated flesh. Jared drops to his knees and presses his forehead to the back of Jensen’s hand where it’s resting loosely on the porcelain side of the bath.

“You should answer me when I call. You can’t disappear like that,” Jared tells him, voice hoarser than it should be. He lifts his head and sits back on his haunches, eyes facing the far wall above the toilet instead of at Jensen, lying there nude and beautiful and so utterly vulnerable. 

“Why didn’t you tell your boss about the phone call?” Jensen asks instead of responding. Jared can hear the splashing of water, and imagines Jensen running his hand up over his knee and along his thigh.

“They don’t know about me.”

“What about you, Jared?”

“That I’m a really good liar.”

Jared brings his knees up and rests his head on them. He feels a hand in his hair, stroking through the strands like a child being comforted. 

The air in the room is humid and thick, and Jared feels sweat beading around the collar of his shirt. He doesn’t know how he got here, like this, but suddenly all he wants to do is tell the truth.

“The Carver killed my brother.”

Jensen’s hand stills, but just for a moment, and then it’s tracing its way down Jared’s face and lifting his chin up until their gazes meet for the first time since Jared’s entered the room. Jensen’s face is soft, slight smile that holds comfort but no pity, and Jared aches with it. 

“It’s going to be okay now, Jared. I promise.” For the briefest moment, Jensen looks more confident than any time since Jared’s met him. Like a man that can see the future even though he can’t fully see the past. 

Jensen’s fingers run along Jared’s jaw and then stop, pressing against Jared’s lips. His skin is hot, flushed from the water and the moment.

“It’ll be our secret.”

***

The phone ringing rips Jared out of his sleep, which was light to begin with. 

The evening with Jensen after the incident in the bathroom was comfortable enough, yet relatively silent, and he went to sleep with a physical exhaustion that went beyond the events of the day.

What he doesn’t expect is to see Jensen sitting on the floor next to the coffee table with Jared’s cellphone pressed to his ear. His voice is low, but clear, and Jared realizes instantly that he must be talking to the Carver. 

“It’s over now,” Jensen is saying and somehow his voice doesn’t waver.

“Jensen, give me that,” Jared hisses, lunging across the bed and grabbing at it. This could be his only chance to track the call, and wasting even a second could be the difference. 

Jensen drops the phone to the ground suddenly like it’s scalding him. He looks up at Jared with wide eyes, still-fading bruises somehow making him look impossibly young. “He’s gone.”

“Shit, fuck, _fuck,_ ” Jared swears, swooping his hand down to grab the phone and check to see if the tracker he put into it picked up anything. 

Jensen flinches back from him and Jared curses _himself_ then. 

“I’m sorry, Jared, I am. But I had to tell him. I had to.”

Jared tries to calm himself down, even though he’s vibrating with disappointment, because the last thing he wants is to freak Jensen out. He reaches for Jensen, placing his hand lightly on his knee.

“Hey, it’s okay, I get it. I do,” Jared says, modulating his voice. He’s pleased when Jensen’s muscles slowly release their tension. “Why were you waiting here? How did you know he would call?”

Jensen barks out a humorless laugh and nods at the clock on the phone. “3:06 AM, on the dot. He’s nothing if not predictable.”

It’s a great observation, and Jared wonders exactly how much Jensen figured out about the Carver’s obsessive-compulsive methodology. It’s solid though, and it gives Jared hope that the calls will continue long enough for him to get a real trace on the guy.

“We’ll get him,” Jared assures him. “He’s ritualistic and probably pissed as hell that you got away and ruined his game plan. That will make him sloppy.”

Jensen answers that by climbing into the flimsy pull-out bed and pressing himself flush against Jared’s side. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Jared tenses automatically, uncomfortable and yet too comfortable with their proximity. Jensen doesn’t relent though, and curls himself deeper into the warmth of Jared’s body. Jared can’t bring himself to push him away, although he has to say something.

“Jensen, this is inappropriate.” Jared keeps his voice gentle, but he knows this is a dangerous road they are going down and he has no idea how to stop the car.

“Did you know that marble is the only stone that has translucency comparable to human skin? When it’s new and soft, it’s easy to work with, to refine, but when it ages, it gets harder. “

“Jensen…”

“But you have to be careful with it because it soaks up the oil on your skin, and it turns yellow and tarnishes and it’s never quite as beautiful if it’s manhandled too much.”

Jensen rubs his face along the side of Jared’s neck, pulling Jared’s arm up in some semblance of a hug. Jared has no idea what to do, so he goes with it, and lets Jensen manipulate his limbs.

“Jensen, did he ever do anything to you, besides the obvious?” Jared swallows heavily. “Did he _touch_ you?”

“Of course not, Jared, what did I just say? You never touch the art.”

Jensen breathes into the meat of Jared’s palm, his fingers holding Jared’s hand so that it cradles his face. 

Jared stares up at the ceiling, and keeps as still as he possibly can.

“Who are you, Jensen?” 

Jensen pauses, and Jared can feel his eyelashes fluttering against his palm.

“I don’t think I know yet.”

***

Jared drags himself out of bed around 7:30 AM, detangling his limbs from Jensen’s warm body as he does it. He stops for a moment, looks at how peaceful Jensen is like this, in repose. The lines around his eyes are softened, and his mouth, with its finally-healing cut, opened slightly. Jared wonders what he dreams about, if he can see everything in them that he can’t see awake. His family, his last name, his torturer. If he sees Jared there now as well, and whether it gives him comfort.

Jared finds himself wanting to give Jensen comfort, and it scares him almost as much as the serial killer he’s supposed to be focusing on.

“I’m going for a run,” Jared tells Agent Cohen, who must have made the shift switch with Agent Sampson sometime in the early morning. He needs to clear his head and find a bit of perspective, and the solid thump-thump of sneakers on pavement always helps him do that.

He gets back an hour later and finds Jensen still sleeping. He resists the urge to strip off the damp sweat-soaked clothing he’s currently wearing and climb back into the bed to press Jensen to him. He can imagine Jensen snuggling into him, brushing his nose over Jared’s clavicle and breathing him in. 

Jared’s still imagining Jensen’s mouth against his skin while he’s in the shower, getting rid of the grime of the run that quite obviously did _not_ give him the perspective he was hoping for. 

He tells himself that it’s just sexual frustration; he hasn’t been with anyone in a while, and Jensen is beautiful and needy and _there,_ and Jared is lonely, so lonely. So Jared lets himself press one palm to the wall of the bath as water pours over him, the other hand stroking himself just on the flipside of too rough. He thinks about Jensen sitting in this very bath, thinks about Jensen’s hand in his hair and Jared’s suddenly ashamed. Jared should be the one taking care of him, not the other way around. 

Jared bites his lip to keep from crying out as he pictures Jensen’s eyes staring at him hazy and green, and comes all over his fist.

Jensen’s awake when Jared gets out of the shower, and Jared can’t look him in the eye for a moment. 

“I can do bagels,” Jensen says, breaking Jared’s reverie, and pushes a cream-cheese-slathered bagel across the kitchen counter at him. 

“Maybe you worked as a baker,” Jared replies, happy that Jensen at least doesn’t seem remotely fazed by the awkwardness of last night. “We should keep all options on the table.”

Jensen smiles slightly, bringing his coffee mug to his mouth to blow on it. Jared tries not to look, and fails miserably. “I’m all for keeping our options open.”

Jared shakes it off and shoves half a bagel in his mouth just so he has something else to concentrate on. He chews thoughtfully, before taking a swig of his own coffee.

“So,” Jared starts. “Today we wait. If your observation is correct, and the Bureau’s best profilers say that it likely is, then the Carver should be calling back this afternoon at or around 3:06 PM.”

“And we’ll be ready this time?” Jensen asks, his face as blank as it gets, and Jared find that he hates that look.

“ _I’ll_ be ready,” Jared corrects, but does so with a nod that seems to placate Jensen.

Jensen stands up quickly and finishes his coffee. “Fine, we wait. I have a deck of cards and a nagging feeling that I can whip your ass at poker. You game?”

That’s exactly what he ends up doing for the next few hours, and Jared starts to wonder if Jensen’s from Vegas instead of some vague southern state. A marathon of bad reality shows follows, and Jared attempts to keep at least a foot of distance between himself and Jensen on the couch. Jensen doesn’t seem to like that, and his thigh or elbow keeps nudging closer, tiny touches that Jared could write off as accidental if he didn’t know better.

The tension in the room ratchets up as the clock nears three. It’s like an itch under Jared’s skin, the anticipation. There’s fear there, and hope, and an odd sense of dread that when the Carver is caught, Jensen won’t be in his life anymore. Jared doesn’t know what to do with that, so he lets it sit there in the pit of his stomach to deal with another day.

The last thing he expects is for the phone to ring a few minutes before the time, and have it be Misha, of all people. Jared swears under his breath and wonders if he can get away with not answering, but figures that would look even more suspicious to his partner, who is already on alert where this case is concerned.

“Hey, Misha,” Jared answers, trying to keep his voice schooled. Jensen stares at him fiercely, and Jared turns his back to him.

“Got a possible clue back on the Michael thing,” Misha launches right into it without preamble. 

“Now’s not the best time….” Jared tries to cut him off, but Misha keeps going.

“Seriously, this might be interesting,” Misha insists. “Turns out that in Michelangelo’s _Last Judgment_ in the Sistine Chapel, he painted the archangel Michael as the one helping Christ judge the souls of those trying to get into Heaven. Michael gets to _help decide_ who gets to be saved.”

Jared turns to look at Jensen, who is sitting on the couch placidly, his hands pressed protectively across his abdomen. 

Misha’s voice is getting more excited as he continues. “That made me think and I went back to the pictures of the _renatus_ wounds on the previous victims. I compared them to the one on our current vic, and I don’t know, man, something is off. Almost like part of it is b—"

The call waiting starts clicking and Jared’s heart jumps all the way to his throat. 

“Misha, I gotta go, I’ll call you back,” Jared interrupts and makes sure the tracker is on before answering the other line. He swallows heavily before speaking. 

“It’s about time you called.”

“Agent Kelly, were you waiting for me? I feel special.”

“I’m the one who should feel special. Seems like you’ve been doing some checking up on me recently.”

The Carver chuckles, and it makes all the hair stand up on the back of Jared’s neck. “Not so recent, my dear Agent. I almost helped free you once upon a time, like I freed your brother from his own imperfection.”

Jared has to keep the bile from rising in his esophagus and just barely checks himself from lashing out in anger. He has to play this smart, not rash. “Why don’t you come try and get me now? You have to save your wrath for teenage boys? Scared of a grown man?”

“Oh, it’s not size I’m concerned with, Agent Kelly,” the Carver sing-songs his name, and Jared can feel the hiss in his voice just like Jensen described it. “Take the delicately-featured yet virile young gentleman guarding your door. I would call him a grown man, wouldn’t you?”

The tracker beeps out a location.

“Until next time,” the Carver murmurs before the phone disconnects. Jared is left staring down at the location that the tracker has given him: right in the vicinity of the safe house.

“Oh my God,” Jared breathes, throwing the phone back on the bed and rushing to the front door of the safe house. Less than a few yards from the steps lies Agent Cohen, blood bubbling indecently from the slash across his throat. The man is still alive, though barely, clutching his wrecked neck and twitching in the dirt. Jared drops down and rips off his shirt, pressing the material to the wound.

“Jared!” Jensen calls out. Jared rips his eyes away from Agent Cohen for the moment to see Jensen standing there, face stark white and fingers clutching the doorframe.

Jared’s torn, wanting ever so badly to try and chase after the Carver, even though he knows logically the guy is long gone. He also needs to get Agent Cohen help, but the blue of his lips tells Jared that he’s just seconds away from death. This is his fault, he thinks. This good agent, this good man, is lying in the dirt dying, and somehow all of this is his fucking fault.

“Jared,” Jensen repeats, voice breaking, and Jared realizes that he has to get Jensen out of here. He has a mission, to protect Jensen, to get him to safety, to stop the bastard from hurting anyone else.

Jared pulls Agent Cohen’s hands up to the material, pressing them down so that it can hold it there, but the light fades from his eyes and he stills. Jared attempts to feel a pulse around the wound, but there is nothing there and the agent’s eyes stare up glassily. 

Jared runs back into the house, wiping the blood from his hands as best as he can on the bed sheets before grabbing his phone and calling Gen back at Quantico.

“Heya, Padalecki, long time no hear. You ignoring me or is Misha keeping you hostage?” Gen answers after only two rings.

“Gen, listen to me, I need your help,” Jared says, and he can hear her get serious from the urgency in his voice.

“Of course, Jared,” she sobers up, and he can hear her clicking on her ever-present keyboard. “Did you talk to Misha? We got a few leads.”

“That’s not important now. You need to get backup over to our current location immediately. Agent Cohen’s dead. His throat was slashed.”

“Damn, Jared, what the hell happened?” 

“The Carver happened. He found us.” 

She gasps a breath, but Jared doesn’t let her interrupt anymore. “Listen to me, Gen. I need you to send me a list of other safe houses in the Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island areas right this second. I need to secure Jensen, but I have to be careful not to be tracked, so I’ll let you know which one we’re going to when we get there.”

“Doing it now, and backup is on their way,” she agrees, fingers clacking loudly. “Maybe you should stay until they get there?”

“No, it’s safer if I get Jensen out of here. Let Ferris know I’ll check-in when I get us settled,” Jared says, pausing for just a second. “And thank you, Gen. For everything.”

He hangs up before she can reply and pulls on another shirt to replace the one currently shoring up Agent Cohen’s neck. He puts his holster over it, gun secure, before turning back to Jensen, who is clutching himself a few feet away. 

“He won’t let me go,” Jensen says solemnly, resigned, and it makes Jared want to bite and curse and destroy the man who put that look on his face.

“Fuck that,” Jared snarls. “I’m getting you out of here.”

His hands, still stained with blood, grab Jensen’s forearm. Jensen shivers underneath his fingers, but he nods, and right now, that’s good enough.

***

It’s almost two hours later when Jared pulls into the dilapidated building in Red Hook that contains one of the New York branch's more obscure safe houses. He has to make sure that they aren’t being followed, and goes out of his way to make sure the trail is clear.

He makes sure everything is secure before leading a clearly exhausted Jensen into the main room. This one, unlike the other relatively spacious safe house, is just a studio, small kitchenette off to one side, with a tiny bathroom and no living room. Instead, a queen-sized mattress, with a sheet that has clearly seen better days, holds court in the middle of the room. 

Jared drops the duffel of supplies that he keeps in his trunk at the foot of the bed and his gun holster on the nightstand, before heading over to the kitchen sink and scrubbing the rest of the now-dry blood off his hands. He scrubs viciously, pouring dish soap over his fingers and rubbing until the skin is pink and raw. Eventually they are past the point of cleanliness, but he still lets the water run, pressing his forehead against the wood of the cabinet over the sink and closing his eyes. He just wants to catch his breath, think about things, and figure out what the next course of action needs to be. 

He’s almost startled when he feels the hand in between his shoulder blades, and tenses involuntarily. 

“I’m sorry, Jared.”

Jared spins around, water flying from his dripping hands. “Jensen, this isn’t your fault. Don’t you dare think that.”

Jensen smiles, but it’s sad one, as he raises his hand and strokes it down Jared’s cheek. “Oh, Jared, but it is.”

“Stop that,” Jared mumbles, as Jensen continues tracing lines down his neck, his other hand coming up to join it. He needs to assess the situation, to think, dammit. 

“I’m sorry, Jared, so sorry,” Jensen keeps whispering, and he’s all up in Jared’s space now, the warmth of his breath right there.

“Fuck, just shut up already,” Jared grits out, gripping the front of Jensen’s shirt with his wet hands and pulling him even closer. 

He doesn’t know why he does what he does next, since it doesn’t really make any sense for the situation they are in, and is so unprofessional that his badge is practically aching in his wallet.

But he does it anyway, and crashes his mouth hard against Jensen’s.

Jensen makes a surprised noise in his throat and Jared is half a second away from pulling back before the noise turns into a low moan and Jensen throws his arms tightly around Jared’s neck. They’re just feet from the bed in the small apartment and they stumble backwards, tripping over the duffel and landing roughly on the mattress with a grunt.

“Touch me, Jared, c’mon touch me,” Jensen hisses, his hands doing their own roaming down Jared’s biceps, fingers digging into the flesh almost desperately.

Jared knows he shouldn’t be doing this, especially not when everything is going to hell, but he can’t stop himself, can’t stop the way he suckles Jensen’s puffy bottom lip between his teeth or pulls the material covering Jensen’s body away like it’s on fire.

The carving on Jensen’s belly stares at him, angry and morbid, but Jared just leans down to kiss it, runs his tongue and teeth along the edges of the word, the warning, and Jensen arches so beautifully, so wantonly. Jared feels good, wild, as Jensen’s thighs fall open and bracket his body as Jared ravages the bare skin with his mouth.

Jared pulls down Jensen’s pants and tosses them to the side. His flesh is bared, no underwear to hide his hardening cock and tight balls from Jared’s sight. Jared crowds in then, covering Jensen fully as he tangles his fingers in Jensen’s spiky hair and _pulls_ , until Jensen’s head is tilted back in supplication. 

Jensen cries out, a perfect, wounded sound that Jared wants to eat right out of his mouth. So he does, bending down until their mouths meet in sweet symphony, tongues fighting in discordant dominance. 

Jared is still fully clothed and Jensen presses up for friction against the rough scrape of the fabric covering him. He’s urging Jared on, bare legs wrapping around Jared’s hips with his ankle tapping Jared’s ass like he’s riding a stallion.

“Do it, Jared, do it. Make me feel alive again.”

Jensen’s hands are yanking at Jared’s belt, and his dick is pressing aggressively against Jared’s shirt. He starts mumbling “please, please,” against Jared’s neck and Jared shushes him, tells him that it’ll be okay, that he’ll take care of him now.

Jared drags himself down Jensen’s body and pushes his way in between Jensen’s thighs, lifting his legs up like he’s a marionette. Jensen’s hole is there, on display, pink and tight and begging for Jared’s tongue, so he gives in to it. Licks soft at first, one long stripe like a popsicle on a summer day. The sweet little hole twitches, demanding more, so Jared gets in there, closing his eyes and surrounding himself with nothing but scent and taste and velvet as he works his tongue deep inside of Jensen’s body. 

Jensen’s shaking, hands clutching at Jared’s head as Jared works a finger, and then another, into the space next to his tongue, the way slickened only with spit and sweat and promise. This is all they have for prep, and it’s good, Jared thinks. He wants Jensen to feel the brightness, and there’s something in the back of his brain that tells him Jensen needs to feel the pain.

Jared knows he’s not going to be able to hold out much longer, so he pulls out his fingers to get his pants down. He only gets them as far as his knees before Jensen is whining at the emptiness, so Jared leans into him fully, giving Jensen the weight and assurance of his body as he bites a path down Jensen’s neck and then back up to lavish praise upon his mouth.

“Fuck me, fuck me,” Jensen demands, so hungry for it, and Jared grabs both of his wrists in one hand to hold him still against the headboard while using the other to guide his raw cock into Jensen’s waiting hole.

He bottoms out in one stroke, and Jensen lets out a long, low moan, his entire body shuddering with the sudden intrusion. Jared doesn’t still, just pulls out almost entirely and then slams back in, until his balls slap loudly against the sweet meat of Jensen’s ass. Jensen’s hands are struggling in Jared’s grip, but Jared doesn’t let him go, just holds him there and bites kisses into Jensen’s mouth. 

“Is this what you need?” Jared asks him and Jensen opens those eyes, just like in Jared’s fantasy, except this is real and the world is so bright and suddenly everything is so fucking new.

“I need you,” Jensen murmurs in response, and he’s looking at Jared with such intensity that it’s too much, the intimacy overwhelming, and Jared has to look away. He turns his face into Jensen’s neck and smells the scent of their coupling as his hips snap frantically.

Jensen’s arching his back again, trying to get friction on his cock, and Jared thinks he should probably help him out, get a hand on that lovely pink cock and tug it until it spills all over them both. But he doesn’t, because he wants Jensen to get it himself, wants Jensen to rub eager and hot against the material of Jared’s shirt until Jensen’s poor cock can’t take it anymore and gives up its seed of its own volition.

It only takes a few more minutes, but that’s exactly what happens: Jensen coming without a hand on him as he turns his face into the cording of Jared’s forearm and mouths aimlessly at Jared’s skin.

That’s all it takes to tip Jared over the edge and he presses in fully, grinding his pelvis almost cruelly down until his own orgasm hits him, slicking and claiming Jensen from the inside out.

Jared’s hand loosens its grip on Jensen’s wrists as he collapses against him, and hands immediately slip into Jared’s hair, stroking in the way that is suddenly too familiar and comforting.

Jared presses his face into the sweat-damp warmth of Jensen’s neck, his dick still nestled soft and wet in the swollen depths of Jensen’s body, and wonders where the hell they’re supposed to go from here.

***

Jensen dozes, exhausted by the stress and physical exertion of the day. Jared lets him, allowing himself to take a moment of repose as well. He knows he’s going to have to check-in soon, that there will be debriefings and questions he doesn’t know how to answer, not to mention a madman still on the loose. 

But right now he lets himself lay next to Jensen in the dark, the sun having fallen sometime during their fucking. He presses his nose against the cut of Jensen’s hip, breathing in the heady scent of come and sweat. He can’t help himself from bringing his fingers down to Jensen’s hole, rubbing the pads of them across the wetness there. It’s not only the physical evidence of how very fucked up he is, how much he’s let himself get in over his head, but also of how ridiculously affected he is by Jensen. By Jensen’s face and his warm freckled skin and his mystery. 

Jensen stirs and Jared pulls back, glancing at the wound on Jensen’s stomach. It’s more or less healed, but is almost as blushing pink and swollen as Jensen’s hole, both caused by the ministrations of Jared’s fingers and tongue. It makes something burn in Jared’s belly, something odd and possessive that he needs to rebel against to retain his sanity.

Seeing it again does make him flash back to the end of Misha’s last phone call, about how something was off with Jensen’s wound versus the older victims. He runs the pads of his fingers over it lightly, trying to imagine the way the Carver would have made the incision. The lines themselves don’t flow quite so perfectly, and Jared wonders if it’s because Jensen was alive and under duress when they were made. 

Unless…Jared looks again, and tries to imagine staring out _from_ the wound itself instead of _at_ it. It looks, judging by the angle of the first three letters, almost as if it was written _backwards_.

Jared shakes his head and realizes with a curse that he needs to get himself out of the fantasy world of this damp mattress and call his partner, so he pulls on some pants and goes to check his phone.

He notices with dread that he has four voicemails and three text messages on his phone, and dials into the mailbox. The first one is from Misha, a cursory one asking him where the hell he is, followed by two from Ferris demanding that he call in with his location. The last one, however, is also from Misha, but longer, and it makes Jared stand up and distance himself from the bed and its occupant.

“Jay, listen to me. Gen finally got a hit on the fingerprints. The reason we couldn’t find them earlier is because they were under locked juvie records, but Gen was able to crack them literally two minutes ago. His name is Jensen Ackles. He’s from Dallas and went into the system when he was fifteen after the suspicious death of his parents. He disappeared less than eight months later and hasn’t been heard of for the last sixteen years. Jay, call me, please. Something is off here and we need to figure it out.”

Jared is staring down at his phone and doesn’t realize that he’s holding his breath until Jensen calls out to him from the bed.

“Jared?” Jensen says, his voice sleepy and worn. He sits up and the sheet curves around the arch of his back as he looks at Jared. He looks beautiful like this, even still. Like a fallen angel that hasn’t learned yet that he fell. Just like how the jogger found him near the fountain, lovely and broken.

Jared clutches his phone tighter and stares at Jensen, not knowing what to say because he doesn’t know what it _means._ He’s confused, and Jensen, shrewd as Jared suddenly realizes he is, catches on well enough to get out of bed and start pulling the discarded clothing on. It’s a sign of protection, Jared thinks, armor for whatever conversation is coming next.

“Jared,” Jensen repeats, softer this time, placating, coming towards him with hands held up like Jared’s a spooked horse.

“Jensen,” Jared replies. “Ackles, is it?”

Jensen stills, but only for a moment, coming over to place his hands on Jared’s bare chest. Jared lets him, not able to move with Jensen this close to him. 

“Jared, I don’t know what you think you know, but I can assure you that it’s most likely not the truth.”

“I don’t seem to know anything, Jensen, and that’s the goddamn problem,” Jared hisses, grabbing Jensen by the wrists, trying not to react when Jensen cries out in pain. 

“Jared,” Jensen keeps going, his eyes pleading and shiny. “Let’s calm down and talk about this, okay? I’ll tell you everything I remember, I swear I will. Everything is a mess, it’s jumbled and crazy and I’ve been so confused, but I need you, Jared, I need you so much right now.”

Jared clutches Jensen’s wrists, holding him close and shaking him like a ragdoll. Jensen lets him, just takes it, and Jared knows he can’t figure any of this out when Jensen’s next to him.

He grabs Jensen around the waist with one arm and reaches back into his duffel with the other. Jensen’s eyes get wide when he sees the handcuffs in Jared’s hands, and that when he starts fighting. Jared’s bigger and stronger, though, and better trained. He manages to get Jensen on to the bed and his hands cuffed to the headboard.

“Stop it, Jared, you’re making a mistake!” Jensen cries out, kicking at him with bare feet.

“I can’t think when I’m near you, when you smell like me,” Jared mumbles, not able to resist grabbing Jensen’s face one more time and pressing a brutal kiss to his mouth. He gets up and pulls on a shirt and his gun holster before heading towards the door.

“You can’t leave me here like this! What if he finds me? Oh God, please Jared, please don’t leave me!”

It’s the first time Jared’s really seen Jensen panic, the first time it’s felt pure and real, and Jared has to tear his eyes away. He just needs to talk to Misha. Figure this shit out. Make it right.

“I’ll come back, I just need to know that you’ll be here when I do. I promise, I’ll be back.”

Jensen physically deflates then, his body going limp against the headboard where his arms hang from the handcuffs. His face smoothes out, no longer rigid with fear, resignation coming out of every pore.

“It doesn’t matter. It never matters.”

“It matters, Jensen. Every single time,” Jared replies, but Jensen doesn’t look at him again so he heads out the door.

***

Jared doesn’t call in, just gets in the car and drives, hands shaking on the steering wheel. He thinks things will get clearer the farther he gets from Jensen, but if anything, they get more muddled. 

There are things he knows: he lied to his boss, fucked a victim, and got a federal agent killed, even if unintentionally. These things are facts, things that he can’t change no matter what happens from this point forward.

Then there are the things he doesn’t know, like why all he wants to do right now is turn the car around and go back to Jensen. To tell Jensen that it doesn’t matter what happened in his past, that the scars will heal in time, both inside and out, and Jared will be the balm that soothes them.

As has happened for most of his life, the Carver is the one that makes the decision for him. 

Jared is just hitting Manhattan when his phone rings. He pulls over to the side of the road with a screech of tires, pissed off drivers honking at him in vain.

“I don’t think you deserve him, Agent Kelly.”

“I’m going to hunt you down like a _dog_ ,” Jared grunts into the phone, clutching the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are bright white.

“How quaint,” the Carver replies, his voice far too amused. “And while you are doing that, I will have already taken my Michael back and taught him a lesson about what happens when people leave before their time is up.”

“If you touch him, I’ll kill you,” Jared hisses, starting the car and making an illegal U-turn that barely misses a Hyundai. 

“I never had to touch him, Agent Kelly. That’s what you don’t understand. What people like you will never understand. Michael is the _terribilità_ I have spent my life working towards. I just need a little more time to unleash the majesty of it.” He pauses and his voice lowers, evil incarnate. “ _He_ just needs a little more time.”

“Sixteen years wasn’t long enough for you?”

The tracker on Jared’s phone beeps out a location. Long Island City, near the warehouse the Carver rented with the Michael Tre Sei trust. The Carver would have just enough time to get Jensen there from the Red Hook safe house if he was nearby when Jared left, but Jared will have to check the safe house first, just in case.

The Carver chuckles. “It doesn’t matter now, does it Agent Kelly? You’re too late.”

“It matters. Every single time,” Jared repeats the promise he made to Jensen, and hangs up on the bastard. 

He knows what he has to do now, and step one is taking back the life that was stolen from him when his brother’s sliced-up body was found propped up against a children’s slide.

“I’m coming, Jensen,” he mumbles, and heads back to Brooklyn.

***

The tiny slice of hope that Jared had is shattered when he pushes open the front door of the safe house and sees the headboard shattered and a pool of blood on the bed sheets.

It takes him all of thirty seconds to get back into the car and head towards the Expressway.

There is no sound outside the warehouse, and with the dark of the evening and the cold breeze off the water, Jared is shivering as he pulls his gun out and heads silently around the side of the building to find an entrance. He finds a door with rust-covered hinges and pries it open as quietly as he can.

It’s black inside the space as he moves in, and Jared has to give his eyes a moment to adjust to the lack of light. He moves a few yards until he turns a corner, and there is finally a stripe of moonlight coming in from what looks like a room off to the side. He holds his breath and cocks his gun, sliding along the wall on the far side under the cover of darkness, before finally peering into the open door.

Jensen’s in there, on his side on the floor, his hands still cuffed and his ankles tied together with rope. There’s blood across his forehead and running into one eye, but he looks alert and, more importantly, alive.

Jared does a quick scan of the rest of the small room and sees that it’s empty, so he holsters his gun and rushes into the room. He drops down to his knees and starts untying the ropes to free Jensen’s feet. The ankles are red and skinned, and Jared feels a sick sort of pride that his boy fought enough to have to be subdued.

_His boy. God._

Jared chokes out a muffled sound and grabs Jensen into his arms, pressing his mouth to Jensen’s in a desperate hello. Jensen wraps himself around Jared, cuffed hands tangling into Jared’s hair as his mouth opens and he sucks on Jared’s tongue. 

Jared knows he needs to stop and think rationally now. He has Jensen with him, and now he has to call in for back-up like he should have already done twenty minutes earlier. He goes to pull out his phone but Jensen kisses him harder, fiercely, like them being attached in some way is on the literal edge of life and death.

“I’m thrilled you could join us.”

Jared does pull back then, stumbling backwards and reaching for his gun before stilling when he sees the man silhouetted in the doorframe with his own weapon pointed directly at them.

He’s tall, a giant looming in the dark like an old monster movie. He steps a little further in, and Jared sees him for who he is: just a man. Late-forties, meticulously groomed silver beard and close-cropped hair. Face long and oddly-shaped with eyes so hooded they create their own shadows. Lips curved into a smile much too serene for the moment.

A terrifying boogeyman. But a man nonetheless.

Jared rips his eyes away to glance at Jensen next to him, who is sitting there slumped like a doll, his eyes dark and fixated on the man in the doorway.

The Carver waves his gun with an eyeroll. “I just hate these things, don’t you? No grace to them, no skill. It’s just ‘boom-boom, you’re dead.’ Where’s the fun in that?”

Jared moves slowly until he’s blocking Jensen with his part of his body. Jensen doesn’t move a muscle as their limbs touch.

“If you dislike them so much, why don’t you put the gun down and we can talk this out like adults.”

The Carver raises one well-groomed eyebrow and flashes his teeth. “Adults, Agent Kelly? A little birdie told me that you’re still stuck back in those formative adolescent years.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Jared says, swallowing hard. He feels Jensen’s hand on his hip, coming up and twitching against the leather of his belt.

“I know you think you can save my Michael. Like you thought you could save your brother and all the other imperfect creatures.” He pauses and looks at Jared with an expression that could almost be pity. “They don’t need you to save them, _Jared._ They need me. I help them be free. I help them become _reborn_.”

Jared’s knocked backwards as Jensen uses the pause to grab the gun out of his holster and swings it over to point at the Carver. The Carver looks momentarily shocked, uneasy for the first time since this whole charade began, but his features school themselves when he stares down at Jensen, scarred, bloodied, handcuffed Jensen, on the floor with a stoic look and a federal agent’s firearm.

“Jensen,” Jared says, kneeling up slowly and holding his hands out to placate him. “Jensen, give me the gun. This isn’t the way this should end.”

“It’s not going to end, is it, Michael?” the Carver says, his voice rife with a tenderness that belies his evil.

“My name is Jensen,” Jensen says, low and unwavering.

“Your name is whatever I want it to be,” the Carver replies. “I _created_ you, boy.”

“You created nothing. I created myself.” Jensen cocks the gun. “And my name is fucking Jensen.”

Four shots ring out in succession and the stunned Carver drops to the grown with a thud.

“Goodbye, Christopher,” Jensen murmurs, almost sadly, his arm falling into his lap and the gun clanking aimlessly on the pavement floor.

It takes Jared a minute to snap out of whatever the fuck just happened, and he rushes over to verify that the Carver is, in fact, dead.

“What did you do?” Jared says, kneeling next to the man’s body then turns to stare incredulously back at Jensen. 

Jensen practically crawls over to him, ankles still bloodied and swollen. He pulls Jared away from the body, metal cuffs clanging together as he runs hands that smell like gunpowder over Jared’s damp cheeks.

“It’s over now, Jared. Your job is done now. You did so well,” Jensen says with a soothing voice, pressing kisses to Jared’s lips and eyes and cheeks.

“Jensen, I don’t understand what just happened,” Jared croaks out, but his arms are around Jensen’s waist and he doesn’t let go.

“You don’t need to do this anymore. It’s over. You did so well for those boys, for all the boys. Your brother would be so proud of you.” 

Jensen kisses him, deep and wet, before pulling back. There is blood and sweat running dirty rivulets down his face, but he’s still so breathtakingly beautiful that it hurts Jared to look at him.

“But now, it’s just you and me, okay? I can be perfect for you, Jared. And you’ll take care of me and protect me. Won’t you, Jared? Will you do that for me, please?”

“I have to call my boss, my partner, I have to…” Jensen’s hands tighten in Jared’s hair and all the breath leaves Jared’s lungs. His knees dig against the pavement and the winter air is cold, so fucking cold, but Jensen makes him hot all over.

Jensen grasps Jared’s face in his hands, fingers digging into his cheeks. “You only talk to your mother once a year and when you do all you can think about it how you remind her of the boy she lost. You haven’t had a real boyfriend in years because you don’t want to wake up one day alone.”

“How do you know that?” Jared croaks out. His mind is a mess and he still _can’t let go._

“Because I know you, Jared. Because I was born again just for you. You’ll see how perfect we can be.”

“What do you want from me?”

Jensen smiles, radiant and bright in the dark of the room, and Jared thinks this must be what the pain of love feels like.

“I just want you, Jared. Every single bit of you.”

 

** Epilogue **

Jensen takes Jared’s phone and hits redial, before putting it on the ground. GPS will lead the FBI to the warehouse and the body. They’ll know the Carver is dead and the case, as they say, will be closed.

He hotwires a car near the Queensboro Bridge and Jared doesn’t ask him how he knows how to do that.

They don’t stop until they hit a Motel 6 off the New Jersey Turnpike, which they rent with some of the cash that they got out of an ATM at a 7-Eleven back in Queens.

They shower together, washing the blood and the grime and the past from their bodies. Then they lie down on the flowered bedspread and have sex that is as tender as their first coupling was rough.

Jared stares up at the ceiling, as Jensen peppers kisses all over his body, swollen mouth rubbing along the peaks of his nipples to the valleys of his hipbones. 

Jensen won’t stop touching him, or being touched by him. In the car, his hand had held fast to Jared’s thigh. In the lobby while checking in, he pressed his chest up against Jared’s back and nestled his face in Jared’s neck. Now, in bed, naked and warm, his teeth sink solidly into the meat of Jared’s chest, right above his heart. 

It’s like Jensen is starved for touch, so Jared feeds him. Holds out his arms and gives all of himself because suddenly it seems, after years of lying, Jensen is the only real and honest thing he has left. 

Jensen has seen all of him. Knows his real name, as Jared knows his. 

Jensen, not Michael. _Jensen._

The next morning, Jared sits in front of the mirror. Jensen stands behind him, touching, always touching, a pair of scissors shaping the chestnut strands that fall into his face.

“Not different, just better. New,” Jensen says, cutting Jared’s hair. He mentions hair dye, new clothes, perhaps a beard. Kisses Jared’s neck and murmurs about how the scruff will feel on his thighs. Jared leans into his hands, _allowing_ him. Their eyes meet in the mirror and Jensen smiles.

He crawls into Jared’s lap then, blocking the mirror, and Jared’s world narrows down to Jensen’s body. Jensen’s wounds are healing minute by minute, and Jared thinks with a strange sort of bliss that maybe he has something to do with that.

Jensen’s mouth meets his and Jared stops thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow.

“My masterpiece,” Jensen whispers, with a kiss.

 

**THE END**


End file.
